by Don Mann
In the PLO we’d discuss the challenge and reply we’d use to identify friendly forces. For instance, if you moved into a wood line and heard someone say, “Three,” you’d answer, “Four.” Because the code was seven.
We might simply use a red lens flashlight, but most often we used NVGs and IR, since we did practically everything in the dark.
SEALs are experts at inserting, causing all sorts of destruction, and then leaving the enemy to wonder, What the hell happened? It always sickens me when I’m in the field and see a bunch of MRE wrappers. It signals to the enemy that the U.S. military was here. Large, inexperienced units tend not to worry about leaving their trash behind for the enemy to find.
SEALs typically don’t cook in the field, because we don’t want to be detected by smell. That’s why we don’t use soap, shampoo, or cologne before going on an op.
We don’t break branches, and we don’t leave tracks. We also use the cover of darkness, when it’s available.
We avoid crossing bridges and walking through open areas. Do our best to stay off roads or open trails. And we try to move so that we can’t be tracked. No footprints. No turning over rocks. Move carefully through vegetation. No scrapes or broken branches.
Movement is always limited by weather and the type of terrain.
As for direction finding, our point man, rear security, and patrol leader generally use GPS, but the system fails on occasion due to equipment malfunction, cloud cover, or poor safelight reception. So, in spite of the technology at our fingertips, we still train and rely on good old-fashioned maps and compass techniques. We all know how to ascertain time and direction by looking at the sun, moon, or stars.
Our point man focuses on the sounds, or lack of sound, from native animals and birds. He knows that when birds fly off, it might mean movement nearby. He also listens for geese, dogs, or other animals that can give away position.
If we heard a dog barking or another animal making noise, we had to know what to do. Usually we either laid low in hopes it would move on or had specific plans and methods for taking out early-warning creatures.
Included in every PLO was a list of contingency plans—the what-if list. What if you’re delayed on your insertion, someone is wounded, or a helo or insertion vehicle goes down?
What do we do if we’re compromised? What happens if you run into an enemy patrol? What happens if you’re separated from your squad or platoon? What do you do if you encounter extreme weather?
Every single operator has a primary and secondary duty. If the point man went down, rear security took his place. If the medic was incapacitated, someone was designated to take his place too.
We always had a loss-of-comms plan. What do we do if we can’t establish comms with one another, or with HQ?
We had procedures for calling in air support and rendezvousing with another patrol, unit, vehicle, or vessel. These were also discussed in the PLO.
We’d talk about what to do if we encountered the enemy or surprised a local unit. And how to behave if we were captured.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ A cover for action might be: I was walking down this street looking for this particular building.
A cover for status might be: I’m working as a counselor for the U.S. embassy. Since I was a medic, I always used to say I was helping out at a certain relief agency that was providing medical support to the locals. It worked like a charm.
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You have to be able to live your cover. So you practice it and know it well.
Many SEALs have attended SERE School and are practiced in the techniques of survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. We know that if captured, we should try to escape as soon as possible. During SERE School, we’re taught how to resist interrogation. That’s one reason it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to get any worthwhile info out of a SEAL.
Typically, the corpsman briefed the search-and-rescue plan and the location of the nearest medical facility. Then the commo guy would brief the comms portion of the PLO. The point man would discuss the primary and secondary insertion and extraction routes; the team tactician the specific actions at enemy contact. We all prepared and briefed our specific portion of the mission to our fellow team members and to HQ personnel attending the PLO.
Specific equipment and clothing was also briefed. Were we going to wear ■■ gear, desert camo, or flight suits?
Then we specified the first-line gear we’d be carrying at all times for the specific mission. First-line gear usually included a sidearm, a knife, and an escape-and-evasion (E & E) kit—compasses, flashlights, maps of the area, local currency, and medical gear.
Second-line gear was defined as the equipment we were going to need for our first twenty-four hours of survival—water, MREs, and extra ammo. It was carried on a harness, a vest, or a belt, depending on the op. Second-line gear had to be worn at all times except when sleeping in a tent, barracks, or hotel, in which case it was kept at the foot of the bed.
Today, in operations in the Middle East, SEALs keep their second-line gear on a belt or in a vest and don’t leave the base or garrison without it.
Third-line gear incorporated the things needed for longer-time survival—we called them comfort items—and was usually carried in a backpack, a go-bag, or a bailout kit. It might include extra food and extra ammo, a weapon-cleaning kit, a large orange-colored air panel (to mark your location), a smoke grenade, Claymore mine, a larger medical kit than what you carried with your first-line gear, possibly a butane stove, and maybe a jungle hammock to keep you off the jungle floor.
If an operative was leaving the base or hotel in a car, third-line gear was usually kept in the backseat or stashed in the trunk.
First-, second-, and third-line gear were always prioritized according to the country we were going to and the mission. The gear could change during the mission based on the security level. All this was specified in the PLO. It was part of our planning.
Each SEAL also carried specialized equipment needed for his role in the platoon. So the commo guy carried the satellite phone and radio, and the medic was responsible for the more advanced emergency medical kit. I carried morphine and specialized medical equipment that enabled me to perform a cricothyrotomy, put in a chest tube, or do a cut-down if needed.
Crics, chest tubes, and cut-downs are essential parts of combat medicine. Crics are used to establish airflow when someone’s airway is blocked or damaged; I’d simply slice the person’s throat just below the Adam’s apple and insert a plastic tube to reestablish breathing. Chest tubes are needed for penetrating wounds to the thorax. And cut-downs are required when you can’t get an IV into someone who is wounded.
Once outfitted, the team assembled outside. Typically, every operator carried a blowout patch—a four-by-four-inch battle dressing used to control major bleeding—in his lower left cargo pocket. If that man was hit, everyone on the team knew to use his blowout patch.
Outside, we’d do a sound check, jumping around to make sure our gear didn�
�t rattle or create any noise during movement. Often, we had PJs (Air Force Pararescue) or CCT (combat-control technicians) accompany us through training and on missions. Combat-control technicians were experts at establishing and maintaining communications.
Then we’d do a weapons check by firing off several rounds to verify that each weapon was in optimum working order.
Next, we’d stage a rehearsal. We were sometimes able to plan ahead and create a mock-up building, ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ If we didn’t have time to mock up a building, we’d draw the floor plan on the cement.
We’d execute a walk-through first and review all the commands and procedures. When we worked with U.S. SWAT teams, we’d draw the room, house, or building plan in a parking lot, drive up to the structure, disembark from the vehicle, take cover, simulate the breach into the building, and rehearse actions on the objective.
Any information missing from the PLO was requested in an essential elements of information form (EEI) that was sent up the chain of command.
Sometimes the patrol leader would answer our questions. Other times the questions were handled by intel officers, the commanding officer, or even the task force commander.
The PLO was then briefed again by the senior officers—sometimes an admiral or a general. We’d do our final inspections, and the mission was launched.
Once the mission was over, the senior officer on the mission prepared a post-operations report.
The phases of a mission are:
Pre-mission
Insertion
Infiltration
Actions at the objective
Exfiltration
Post-mission
We went through many middle-of-the-night recalls, warning orders, and PLOs at ST-6 in the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, sometimes getting as far as loading up the aircraft, only to have the mission aborted at the last minute for reasons that were out of our control. A lot of my fellow operators at the team grew increasingly frustrated.
Some guys actually left for other teams in search of real-world action. We called it chasing the rainbow. ST-2 had the European theater, which was busy with counterterrorism. ST-4 was doing counter-narcotics work in Colombia and Central America.
Despite the lack of real-world missions at ST-6, we continued to train nonstop. Because I was the lead climber on ■■■■■■■■■■ I was given the opportunity to work with some of the world’s top climbers, guys like Jay Smith and Charlie Fowler.
Jay and I, along with other climbers in ■■■■■■■■■■ were the first to ascend a new route at Devils Tower in Wyoming—the monolithic volcanic thrust of rock that rises 1,267 feet and was used as a location for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Charlie Fowler and I completed a first-route climb together in Red Rock, Nevada. Days later, he did a climb with ■■■■■■■■ and fell to his death during a rappel.
Charlie had told me that if he ever died while climbing, it would happen during a rappel. He was one of the greatest climbers I’ve ever known.
Working with experts like Charlie and Jay, I became increasingly proficient. I climbed ships and oil rigs and scaled the faces of some of the tallest buildings in downtown Los Angeles at night.
During the late eighties, ST-6 did live-fire ops in U.S. cities all the time, which was pretty remarkable. We fired live rounds into targets in front of bullet traps in various buildings in heavily populated areas. If someone had happened to miss the target, the rounds could easily have passed through a wall and into a home. But we were surgical shooters, and a miss usually constituted nothing more than a four-inch group at center mass.
During training ops, we took down buildings at night. One team fast-roped from helicopters on the roof while the ground assault team fought its way up from the ground floor. Once, we caused so much commotion that the L.A. Times actually wrote an article reporting that men from mysterious black helicopters were invading the city at night.
Another time, when we were training on an oil rig off the California coast, the helicopter we were in hit a crane on the rig as it started to ascend. With the rear rotor damaged, the helo fell forty feet off the rig, skimmed the ocean, and eventually made a hard landing on a public beach. Fortunately, we all got out safe. But the looks on the bathers’ faces when they saw a dozen longhaired guys emerge from a downed helo, wearing flight suits and carrying weapons were priceless.
As we ran across the sand, one stunned woman asked, “Who are you guys, and what happened?”
I couldn’t tell her that we were SEALs who had been assaulting an oil rig, so I said, “Our helicopter was hit by a seagull.”
Next day, the headline in the L.A. Times read: “Black Op Helo Hit by Seagull Crash Lands on Beach.”
The officers on the assault teams—■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■—were in constant competition to see who could work their guys harder and make them more war ready. ■■■■■■■■■■■■ were run by the officers. But at ■■■■■ where I served, the enlisted men were in charge.
Maybe that’s why we had a reputation for being the rowdiest. We worked like beasts and partied hard.
Most of us, including myself, found it hard to shift down during the little time off we had with our wives and families. Instead of enjoying home life, I wanted to be in high gear, living for the moment, feeling that tomorrow could be my last day. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to settle down with my wife, Kim, the sixty or so days a year I wasn’t away from home.
My swim partner and I used to beat the hell out of each other, just for fun. When on the road or out in the field, every night we came back to our room (we were also roommates) and attacked each other like Inspector Clouseau and Cato from the Pink Panther movies.
Once our administrative senior chief joined us while we were messing around, and I put him in a headlock and stuck his head in the toilet. He reported me, but the charge was dismissed.
One night I was lying in bed with Kim in our house in Virginia Beach when, just after midnight, I heard someone jiggling the doorknob on our front door. I whispered, “Hey, Kim. I think someone’s trying to break in.”
I grabbed the loaded .45 I kept under my bed and crawled down the hallway. The front door was to my right. I crawled past the living room, went out the back door, slithered out, and ran around to the front. I was excited. My plan was to surprise the guy from behind and bang his head against the front porch while I held him at gunpoint.
But as I was coming around, a car took off from the front of my house and sped by at seventy miles an hour. It was going so fast, I couldn’t read the license plate number. Disappointed, I returned to bed.
The next day I was back at work at ST-6 when my teammate Dave came up to me and said, “I hope I didn’t bother you guys last night. I got so shit-faced that I went to your house instead of mine and was trying to get in the front door. My house key wasn’t working.”
I shook my head and said, “Dave, you’re not going to believe what almost happened.”
We dressed like civilians, and tried to look like civilians. But it didn’t work all the time. Once, a group of us walked into a bar in Puerto Rico. I knew that we needed a cover, so I said, “Guys, let’s say that we’re in a band.”
One of the guys on my boat crew said, “Yeah, we’ll say we’re called Head East and we just reunited.”
We started talking to a group of girls, and before we knew it, someone on the stage announced that there was a band in the house called Head East. Our cover worked until one of the girls asked us to sing one of our songs.
Another time we were on a dive trip to Key West. We were thirty fit guys with
long hair and beards sitting around a hotel pool and trying not to look like we were in the military. But the girls wouldn’t come near us. They assumed we were gay.
Each of us was given a stipend for clothes. We were supposed to buy two suits and a couple of casual outfits. But some guys, including me, didn’t know anything about buying or wearing fancy clothes.
One guy on the team, whom we called Dirty Dan (he truly earned his name), used to shop at the Salvation Army. He’d show up in used striped pants, a worn checkered jacket, a plaid shirt, and shoes that were a size too big for him. We thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t.
Turned out he was spending all his extra stipend money on guns. Other guys blew their money on motorcycles or cars.
Guys had different ways of blowing off steam. I worked out and raced in world-class multisport endurance competitions. Others entered shooting competitions or sniper matches. Some raced motorcycles or cars. Many competed in hand-to-hand defense meets. Some of the guys on the team were incredible musicians. A precious few were family men.
Hazing was a popular activity, especially on birthdays and when guys were getting married. As the medic, I kept the medical records, so I knew the guys’ birthdays and instigated most of the hazing.
If a guy was getting married, we’d shave off his pubic hair and eyebrows. On a teammate’s birthday, we’d make him play a game called a shot or a shot.
We’d put paintball .38 rounds in the freezer, then lay out ten to twenty shots of tequila. We’d ask the guy which one he wanted, a shot or a shot.
If he chose the paintball shot, we’d fire it at his bare stomach, which stung bad and left a big red welt. Guys would alternate back and forth.
This went on for an hour until the guy was throwing up from all the tequila and his stomach was covered with welts.
Sometimes we’d wrap the birthday boy in duct tape and throw him in the ocean.
As my thirtieth birthday approached, I knew I was next, and I tried to come up with a plan to keep the thirty guys on my team off me. On the day itself we happened to be working in the kill house at the ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Thirty of us had driven there, two men per car.
